U.S. electricity watchdog issues first violations

LOS ANGELES, June 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. electricity reliability watchdog agency on Wednesday issued the first two fines to two utilities that failed to keep trees clear of power transmission lines, causing outages last year, said the agency, North American Electric Reliability Corp.

Baltimore Gas & Electric Co and MidAmerican Energy Co were each charged with failing to keep vegetation under control to the point that trees rubbing against big power lines caused the lines to be forced off-line in two separate incidents, NERC said.

The August 2003 blackout that affected 50 million people in the U.S. Northeast and Ontario was caused when trees rubbed against big power lines, which in turn caused a cascade of outages.

NERC is a self-regulatory organization that is overseen by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The eight notices of violations against utilities announced on Wednesday were the first given by NERC.

Six of the notices to FERC from NERC did not call for fines. FERC must review the fine proposed by NERC against Baltimore Gas & Electric and MidAmerican Energy.

Rick Sergel, NERC president and chief executive, said more than half of the 1,400 violation to NERC reliability procedures that include a wide range of offenses were self-reported.

Baltimore Gas & Electric reported its own violation and has accepted the proposed $180,000 penalty. It admitted it failed to keep trees trimmed to make clear space for a 230-kilovolt transmission line. The line went out of service for a day last August because of the failure of the utility, it admitted.

MidAmerican Energy Co also reported its own violation, NERC said, which also caused a one-day outage of a major transmission line.

A proposed penalty of $75,000 will be assessed for the company's failure last September to keep vegetation clear of a 345-kilovolt transmission line from the Cooper Nuclear Generating Plant in Nebraska to the Booneville Substation in Des Moines, Iowa.

MidAmerican Energy is a subsidiary of MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a Berkshire Hathaway Corp (BRKa.N) BERKb.N company. (Reporting by Bernard Woodall; Editing by Christian Wiessner)